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Russian Meteor Called "New Weapon Tested By Americans" By Conspiracy Theorists
By
Jen Chung
Published Feb 16, 2013
Modified Feb 17, 2013
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By
Jen Chung
Published Feb 16, 2013
Modified Feb 17, 2013
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As Russia begins to clean up after a meteor blasted through the Ural Mountains region yesterday, scientists can't quite agree how big the mass was. But at least the conspiracy theorists are out in force: according to Reuters, "Nationalist leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky told reporters in Moscow it could have been 'war-mongers' in the United States. 'It's not meteors falling. It's a new weapon being tested by the Americans,' he said."
One early report said it was a missile, shot down by the Russian military. And some people watching it, in this dashboard cam video, thought it might have been the Chinese.
No fragments of the meteor have been found (creating fertile ground for those conspiracy theories) but 9,000 workers are helping with clean-up. BBC News reports, "President Vladimir Putin ordered the operation to help some 1,200 people who were injured, including 200 children, mostly by shattered glass. The shockwave damaged an estimated 200,000 sq m (50 acres) of windows."
A 20-foot wide crater was found in Chebarkul, in the Chelyabinsk region, but no fragments were found in the bottom of the lake. The other mystery is how big the meteor might be. The NY Times reports:
Based on preliminary calculations, the solar system interloper that shook Chelyabinsk weighed about 7,000 tons and was about 50 feet in diameter when it entered the atmosphere at 40,000 miles per hour at about 9:20 a.m. local time, said Peter G. Brown, a professor of physics at the University of Western Ontario. Dr. Brown based his calculations on low-frequency sound waves that traveled as far as Alaska. A worldwide network of such sensors listens for these vibrations, too low to be heard by humans, to verify the ban on nuclear tests.
However, the Times adds, "Russian experts estimated a much smaller size, of just 10 feet across and 10 tons."
On the other hand, NASA believes the meteor was 55 feet in diameter when it entered the atmosphere and about 10,000 tons. Plus, per CNN, "The space agency also increased the estimated amount of energy released in the meteor's explosion from about 300 to nearly 500 kilotons. By comparison, the nuclear bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 released an estimated 15 kilotons of energy."
While the meteor was scary to those in Russia, at least one young New Yorker had a way to celebrate it. The Post spoke to "Maria Hess, 21, who bellied up to the bar at Jimmy’s 43 on the Lower East Side." Hess said, "I’m getting drunk in honor of the asteroid," who also expressed interest in how the stricken region's cellphone network went down, "It would be kind of cool. So many people are always on phones." Next Todd P party: Asteroids Attack!
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meteorite
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Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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